CHARITY MASEKA (Greater Joy Community School)

This week I had the real pleasure of talking with Charity Maseka, who teaches the Middle Class in Early Years at Greater Joy Community School in Kitwe. Charity is 27 and lives in Chimwemwe, the area where Greater Joy School is, with her husband and three children, Emmanuel aged 8 and in grade 4, Trisha Kunda aged 5 in grade 1 and her little one, Angel Kunda who is getting on towards 3 and is in the baby class, all at Greater Joy.

Charity teaches 34 children in the 3-4 year age group and has been telling me more about what she enjoys about being a teacher. After leaving Annech College of Education in Kitwe almost four years ago she came immediately to Greater Joy as a qualified teacher to start her career in education. A lot of things have changed in this short time. She was telling me how until recently the idea was to sit the children in rows at desks and teach them facts, even at a young age. All lessons were for a single subject so when you taught maths it was only maths you taught. The children had to sit still and be quiet. In this last year things have changed a lot for the better, with lessons that cross over subjects such as a Science lesson possibly on Personal Hygiene. As well as the science part they would be discussing subjects such as language and grammar and even maths bringing in shapes etc as in the bar of soap. This has all happened partly through the training that the teachers have received from Dan, Emily and Jan with Beyond Ourselves at the schools and much more recently from the new Zambian Government training methods and courses that are being run.

Working in the Counting Corner

And in the Puzzle Corner

Now a lot of emphasis is on “corners” or areas of different interest in the classes. The class is not full of straight rows of desks but rather varied with a floor mat for the little ones to play and learn, a “shop” corner where children can go and play at shopkeepers and customers, and another area that may have a “craft” theme with paper and card to make things. One book given by the Government is working really well and that is about making resources themselves out of low cost or recyclable materials. This is happening throughout all of our schools as you can see here at Kawama Community School where they have made simple telephones from discarded plastic pots and string.

Using low cost and recyclable materials

Charity also brought up another excellent initiative which is being pushed by the Zambian training scheme. This is so obvious to those of you in Education in the UK. It involves Teaching Strategies and the one Charity was showing me was Pose : Pause : Pounce : Bounce which is a way of asking open questions and getting plenty of different responses.

Wall posters on various initiatives and strategies

This training that Charity has been undertaking, along with her colleagues in all the schools, has certainly helped her with class management and motivation.

Beyond Ourselves has also been helping with Differentiation where the teachers can all identify the faster learners from the slower ones and can put into place different strategies to help them all gain the most from the education.

For me it seems so much better that the children in the schools seem to be enjoying the lessons much more and are really interested in learning